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There are many reasons to follow and mock the Miami Hurricanes scandal, ranging from the large dollar amounts to the spectacle of a 40 year old man sad that his college “friends” would forget about him after he stopped giving them money. But in addition to the national part of the story, there are many local angles as well. We have talked a great deal about Clint Hurtt, the Louisville Recruiting Coordinator who is at the center of the scandal, but UK fans should not forget about the former Miami Athletic Director’s role as well. Paul Dee was in charge of the Miami program for 15 years, from 1993-2008 and as such, had the job of overseeing the out of control Hurricane ship. He hired Butch Davis, followed him up with Larry Coker and then finished the sundae with Randy Shannon. In addition, he headed many fundraising efforts and became very close with one Nevin Shapiro, the booster who is alleged to have given over $2,000,000 in illegal inducements to Miami athletes.

Shapiro’s relationship with the players has been well-documented in the thorough Yahoo Sports report But Shapiro was also very close to Dee himself, taking a number of donations from the booster and at one point, having Shapiro lead the Hurricanes on the field before the game. He either knew of Shapiro’s relationship with the players or was willfully negligent in discovering why this 40 year old man seemed to be “boys” with all of his football players, while donating huge sums of money to the school.

The Yahoo story shows that Dee is clearly an incompetent, or potentially dirty, Athletics Director. However it is also clear that Dee is a hypocrite in every sense of the word. From 2008-2010, Dee was in charge of the NCAA Committee on Infractions. He oversaw two high profile cases in USC football and Memphis basketball. During those two hearings, Dee decided to use his power to move the NCAA into a different realm of enforcement than it had previously ever enter into. Whereas before, some form of knowledge was usually required to give a school sanctions, Dee began the notion of “strict liability” in NCAA enforcement. He essentially claimed that anything that happens on a school’s campus or in connection with its programs, should be known by the administrators and if it is not…well that is tough.

In both the USC and Memphis cases, knowledge of the infringing actions was never shown, and in the Memphis case never alleged. Still Dee took the position that the programs and coaches such as Calipari should be punished on a strict liability basis. He famously said, “high profile players demand high profile compliance.” While making those comments, Dee set himself out to be a new renegade enforcer of college athletics, sick of excuses and forcing compliance to all rules. And yet now we find out that Dee oversaw what potentially may be the most egregious rule-breaking over the past two decades in college athletics. Whereas USC had one main player (Reggie Bush) who took money from outside boosters/agents and Memphis had one player (Derrick Rose) whose ACT score was in question, Miami has 72 CONFIRMED players who took illegal benefits. And all of those benefits were taken from a booster so connected to the program that he was allowed to run out on the field with the team at a home game.

Hypocrisy is a word thrown around all the time in the world and it is often not appropriate for the situation. But in this case, hypocrisy doesn’t even seem a strong enough term. Paul Dee oversaw a committee that took down John Calipari and the Memphis basketball program by creating a new “no knowledge needed” standard never before enforced. Now Calipari is somewhere likely seething as this same man who took away his program’s accomplishments with a self-righteous standard that he was clearly not capable of following, is now proven to have been the head of the greatest rogue program of them all. All Miami games should, and one would presume will, be vacated and the program must receive the maximum punishment. But more importantly, Paul Dee has been shown to be the worst type of leader, a hypocritical weasel of a man who believes his calling is to chastise others while he willfully neglects the own rot under his nose.

I feel sorry for Randy Shannon. He tried to keep his players away from this scum bag and raised the football teams graduation rate to an all time high. He wanted this Ponzi sceeming SOB away from his program but Paul Dee and the President of the UNIVERSITY tried to put pressure on him to have a meeting with him. I think Randy Shannon tried to run a clean program but there is a agent around every corner in Miami. Randy Shannon is from the streets of Miami and I think he is a stand up guy. I also don’t think that the school was getting this guy to pay recruits I think he wanted to buddy up with the 15 to 20 players who were going to be 1st round draft picks from the 2002 -04 teams. The sad thing is that the talent in the program has been on the decline since they got in bed with this guy. As a Miami fan I want the President fired. I hate to see this scandal unfold but I say in 6 or 7 years Miami will be competing for a national championship on the back of hard working players and not the pre modona guys who think they are big shots just because they have a U on their helmets!

AMEN, Matt! What a rotten, low-life turd of a man Dee “appears” to be. The NCAA should now officially vindicate Cal and Rose and reinstate Memphis’ Final Four appearance. From the very beginning, none of the Derrick Rose stuff made sense anyway. Poor Cal, give the man credit, for crying out loud!!!

#30 Not. It was all about the SAT. Although it was never proven that Rose himself didn’t take the SAT. Because Rose never responded to a letter sent to him by the testing company that required action by Rose to prove he took the test his score was then void making him ineligible and costing Memphis a Championship game run. Something tells me though that if Memphis would have won the game against Kansas none of this would have ever happened because if you remember a certain Kansas PF’s eligibility was in question as well but nothing ever came of it. Its pure hypocrisy by the NCAA. Pure and simple. See Corey Maggette at Duke for more hypocrisy.

My question with this whole thing is that if 72 (that is a HUGE number) players were sitting there BLATANTLY taking benefits, what were all the other players doing? There is no way in hell they didn’t know about it and there is probably no way that some of them weren’t on the take from other people. It’s not like you can really have a problem running THAT rampant without other people knowing and wanting a piece of it. Just not possible. I’m sure there were more than those 72–not necessarily from Shapiro–getting more benefits from someone.

When you consider the types of situations that Shapiro was describing, where players were just going to his house in REALLY NICE cars with nice rims, etc. how can the other players on the team not know about and expect similar treatment? Maybe Shapiro didn’t pay or give anything directly to some other players but I’ll bet dozens more hung out at his house regularly and took what they could.

Amen 31 on your last two sentences. Paul Dee should be held accountable for any and all of Miami’s woes. You have to give Matt props for all that he said and if anyone had a shread of sense he should not only have to give up his position at the NCAA, but his pension at Miami. But knowing how these guys stick together I would assume that they’ll give this asswipe a raise instead of sh!t canning him.

I hope Matt’s post can get some national attention because it’s dead on. Miami is going down. That much we know. But the NCAA has some answering to do for it’s selection of this jackass for their committee on infractions. Dee should be fired and banned from the NCAA as well as those that selected him for his position with the NCAA. The NCAA needs a restructuring from top to bottom including the rules.

WOW, What a great article Matt!! As a true Kentucky and Calipari fan, I can only hope justice is done here in this case but, it will not surprise this ole boy if it is not! The NCAA with Mark Emmert at the helm will probably find a way to sugar coat the allegations against them and prove once again just how inconsistant he and his organization can be. Truth be known, Paul Dee and Mark Emmert are probably best of buds. Wouldn’t it be sweet for a coruption story to break on the NCAA and Mark Emmert!! Yeah Baby

not defending miami but i think the allegations by a convicted sleazebag doing 20 yrs should be keenly scrutinized. if he’s being compensated in some way for spilling his guts, then why wouldn’t he tell what everybody wants to hear? what’s he got to lose? i wouldn’t w

Amen. I would be interested to find out the number of cases Dee had any influence over and their respective outcomes. He deserves to be exposed at this point and it will provide perspective on how dirty the NCAA can be (not just its member schools). It’s about time they were investigated (independently, of course).

I agree with the general tenor of the post, but running on the field with the team isn’t necessarily Exhibit A proving a close relationship with the AD. I’ve run on the field with the Wildcats a time or two and I’ve even never met any of Kentucky’s coaches or athletic department personnel.

This garbage going on at Miami is just another reason that the NCAA authority should be eliminated and the whole thing should be brought under the federal court system so people like the Miami AD can be prosecuted, jailed, or possibly executed if need be.

That Paul Dee was unable to comply with his own rules does not invalidate the rules; it only invalidates Paul Dee as a competent athletic director.

I think that there should be strict liability for coaches when it comes to players receiving improper benefits. They are in the best position to police such things, and they should make it their business to know what kinds of lifestyles their players are leading.

The authenticity of a player’s SAT score is another issue. Coaches are in no position to know whether or not their players actually took their own SATs. If a university has gone through the appropriate channels to verify a student-athlete’s high school academic achievements, it should not be punished for the failings of those established channels.

What an F’n clown this guy is… looks like anyone who is a Cal, Memphis, or USC fan is royaly pissed about this whole situation. Yet from the USA Today column, “”We didn’t have any suspicion that he was doing anything like this,” Dee told the Palm Beach Post. “He didn’t do anything to cause concern.””

RE: #45
Definitely a clown… He just needs about 100 text messages containing the same 2 words Cal tweeted … “Strict liability”. Although, I think I would go with “Strict liability, you hypocritical biatch”